THE DEMOCRATIC WORKPLACE

When the UK government announced in 2012 that it was shutting down 36 Remploy factories, which were dedicated to employing people with disabilities, it left hundreds of workers looking at an uncertain future.

In West Yorkshire, 12 former employees from the Leeds and Pontefract sites took matters into their own hands, pooling their £5,000 ($6,900) redundancy payments to set up a worker co-operative. Now, Enabled Works is a thriving packing, distribution and storage business run by 22 worker-members. Everyone has different responsibilities but gets the same hourly rate of pay.

‘People said that disabled people couldn’t run their own business,’ John Wormald, Enabled Works’ ethics and integration manager told Co-operatives UK. ‘We took that as a challenge. If you have disabilities life’s a challenge, so this was just another one.’¹

International co-operative body CICOPA estimates that around 11.5 million people are members of worker cooperatives across the globe, but it’s likely that this number is much higher due to